Six staff members said Sunday that they are resigning from the office of Rep. Jeff Van Drew, D-N.J., office over reports that he plans to switch parties because he opposes impeachment of President Donald Trump.
In a letter to his chief of staff, five of the employees said Van Drew’s decision “does not align with the values we brought to this job when we joined his office.”
The staffers said they respect Van Drew but “can no longer in good conscience continue our service.”
A sixth staffer is also leaving his office, NBC News confirmed. The staff members include Van Drew’s legislative director, communications director and director of constituency relations.
Cheri Bustos, chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, offered the staffers work with the party’s campaign arm until they find new jobs that “align with their values.”
Two Democratic leadership sources told NBC News on Saturday that Van Drew was expected to change his registration to the Republican Party.
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The decision came after Van Drew voted against moving forward with the impeachment inquiry, saying testimony presented during House hearings hadn’t persuaded him.
Speaking Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., suggested that polls showed that Van Drew had lost support of Democratic voters who elected him in 2016.
An internal poll conducted for Van Drew this month and obtained by NBC News showed that just 28 percent of Democratic respondents said he deserved to be renominated. Nearly 60 percent said someone else should be the party’s nominee.
Boeing’s board was in Chicago on Monday for a scheduled meeting, and is consulting with senior leaders at the company before they make a final decision, according to four people with knowledge of the deliberations. An announcement is likely to be made Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning, the people said, asking not to be identified because the discussions were still private.
Though no decision had been made as of Monday morning, one person familiar with the matter said the most likely scenario was that Boeing would pause production of the Max for an initial 60-day period.
Should Boeing follow that plan, the company intends to redeploy the thousands of workers building the Max to other projects, avoiding layoffs or furloughs for now, another person familiar with the matter said.
Boeing is also trying to figure out how it would handle the disruption to suppliers. Though it may provide support to some, others are likely to endure significant financial pain if Boeing stops accepting parts for a period of months. Shares of Spirit AeroSystems, which makes the fuselage of the Max, were down about 4 percent in early trading on Monday. Boeing’s shares were down more than 3 percent.
There is still a chance that Boeing could further reduce the rate of production, instead of shutting down the factory. In April, the company said it would reduce the number of 737 planes it produced each month to 42 from 52. A further reduction would keep the line operational, avoiding the complex process of restarting it months from now.
San Francisco police officers wait while homeless people collect their belongings. Nearly a quarter of the country’s homeless population lives in California.
Ben Margot/AP
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Ben Margot/AP
San Francisco police officers wait while homeless people collect their belongings. Nearly a quarter of the country’s homeless population lives in California.
Ben Margot/AP
Updated at 1:40 p.m ET
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal in a case originating from Boise, Idaho, that would have made it a crime to camp and sleep in public spaces.
The decision to let a ruling from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals stand is a setback for states and local governments in much of the West that are grappling with widespread homelessness by designing laws to regulate makeshift encampments on sidewalks and parks.
The case stems from a lawsuit filed nearly a decade ago. A handful of people sued the city of Boise for repeatedly ticketing them for violating an ordinance against sleeping outside. While Boise officials later amended it to prohibit citations when shelters are full, the 9th Circuit eventually determined the local law was unconstitutional.
In a decision last year, the court said it was “cruel and unusual punishment” to enforce rules that stop homeless people from camping in public places when they have no place else to go. That means states across the 9th Circuit can no longer enforce similar statutes if they don’t have enough shelter beds for homeless people sleeping outside.
Los Angeles attorney Theane Evangelis, who is representing Boise in the case, argued the decision ultimately harms the people it purports to protect because cities need the ability to control encampments that threaten public health and safety.
“Cities’ hands are tied now by the 9th Circuit Decision because it effectively creates a Constitutional right to camp,” Evangelis told NPR in an emailed statement.
In court documents, lawyers for Boise said, “Public encampments, now protected by the Constitution under the Ninth Circuit’s decision, have spawned crime and violence, incubated disease, and created environmental hazards that threaten the lives and well-being both of those living on the streets and the public at large.”
Major West Coast cities and counties with soaring homeless populations had backed Boise in its petition, including Los Angeles County, where the number of people without a permanent place to live has jumped by 16% in the past year.
As NPR reported, California is where nearly a quarter of the country’s homeless population lives.
The homeless and their advocates say ticketing homeless people does nothing to solve the bigger housing crisis.
“Paying lawyers six figures to write briefs is not really going to build any more housing,” said Howard Belodoff, a Boise civil rights attorney.
Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, added: “Housing, not handcuffs, is what ends homelessness.”
The center, which was one of three groups to file the case in 2009, hailed the decision as being essential to encouraging cities to propose constructive alternatives to homelessness.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development found that more than 550,000 people experienced homelessness on a single night in January 2018. Of those, nearly 200,000 were unsheltered.
The case now returns to the 9th Circuit. The city of Boise says it is evaluating its next steps.
WASHINGTON – Former Hewlett-Packard CEO and 2016 Republican primary candidate Carly Fiorina said in an interview with CNN that she thinks it “vital” President Donald Trump be impeached but did not rule out voting for him in 2020.
Fiorina said she voted for Trump in 2016 because she felt the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton “also was corrupt”, though she has been “very disappointed” by Trump’s performance in office.
She said Trump’s conduct as president is “not just unbecoming, I think it’s destructive to our Republic.” As an example, Fiorina cited Trump’s attacks on Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman for honoring a congressional subpoena to testify in the impeachment inquiry.
On Friday, the House Judiciary Committee approved two articles of impeachment against Trump and the full House is expected to vote on the charges this week.
“I think it is vital that he be impeached,” Fiorina said. Yet, even though she thought Trump’s “conduct is impeachable,” she questioned if he should be “removed this close to an election.”
Fiorina said she was saddened to see “that the principles that are being debated in this impeachment trial, separation of powers, abuse of power, obstruction of Congress” did not seem to resonate with people as much as partisan politics.
When asked if she had a message for her fellow Republicans who are considering Trump’s impeachment on Capitol Hill, Fiorina said she would tell them, “In this country, hanging onto a job is not the most important thing.”
“In this country, we don’t pledge allegiance to a party or to a president. In this country, principles matter,” she said.
During the 2016 primary campaign, Trump was criticized after he attacked Fiorina’s appearance in an interview with Rolling Stone.
“Look at that face!” Trump said, according to the magazine. “Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?”
Trump later told Fox & Friends, “Probably I did say something like that about Carly,” but he explained, “I’m talking about persona, I’m not talking about looks.”
Fiorina, who would later join Texas Sen.Ted Cruz’s ticket as his running mate, said she at the time that she thought Trump’s comments were evidence she was “getting under his skin.”
In her CNN interview, Fiorina said she no longer recognizes the Republican Party and that “loyalty to Trump is what I think it stands for.”
She said she didn’t know if she would ever run for office again and if she did, she was uncertain if it would be as a Republican.
“My party designation doesn’t define me. It never has,” she said.
Despite her many misgivings about Trump, she left open the possibility that she might vote for him again, depending on the alternative.
“Honestly, it depends who the Democrats put up. And I won’t go any further than that,” she said.
“Jeff Van Drew’s decision to switch parties is a betrayal to every voter who supported him in 2018,” Mr. Sweeney said in a statement. “But now he is out of the Democratic Party and in November, we are going to take him out of Congress.”
Gov. Philip D. Murphy, speaking on CNN, predicted that Mr. Van Drew would be defeated.
“He’s putting politics over the Constitution,” Mr. Murphy said. “I think it’s ridiculous.”
Mr. Van Drew’s district sprawls across the southern part of New Jersey, from Atlantic City west toward the Pennsylvania border.
If Professor Harrison, who lives in Longport in Mr. Van Drew’s district, wins the support of established Democratic Party leaders in the district, she may face a primary challenge of her own.
The left-leaning Working Families Alliance issued a statement late Saturday laying blame for the debacle on George Norcross III, a Democratic power broker who is a member of the Democratic National Committee and who had supported Mr. Van Drew’s political climb from mayor to state senator to congressman.
“This is a direct result of the South Jersey Democratic machine’s power — a machine that engineered Van Drew’s rise knowing his values were out of step with the party,” said Sue Altman, director of the alliance, an affiliate of the national Working Families Party.
On Sunday, she said she anticipated insurgent Democratic challengers.
“I think there’s still some very qualified candidates who are going to emerge,” Ms. Altman said. “I would imagine there’s a real thirst for an anti-machine candidate.”
Are you nervous about the Dow’s wild swings, brought on by trade war tweets from President Donald Trump or announcements from China saying a trade deal with the United States is on or off the table?
Get used to it.
Market volatility driven by trade and tariffs isn’t likely to fade anytime soon despite the two economic superpowers agreeing Friday to a “Phase 1” deal. The United States agreed to roll back some tariffs on Chinese imports and cancel a round of levies that was set to hit Dec. 15. In return, China agreed to boost its purchases of U.S. agricultural products.
“Pandora has opened the box. Trade strife is here to stay,” says Jeff Mortimer, director of investment strategy at BNY Mellon Wealth Management. “There’s not going to be a single document, (or) signing of a ‘Phase 1’ deal, that makes it go away.”
The “Phase 2” and “Phase 3” deals between the world’s two biggest economies might be even tougher to hash out as issues such as theft of U.S. intellectual property and Chinese currency manipulation are complicated.
“Any optimism will dissipate pretty fast after a Phase 1 deal,” says Christopher Smart, chief global strategist at Barings Investment Institute.
That means 401(k) investors can expect periodic market drops on negative trade news, such as the Dow’s 724-point plunge March 22, 2018, when Trump first proposed hitting China with $60 billion in tariffs.
Stock performance won’t be all bad. Expect triple-digit gains when positive headlines boost optimism on trade and growth.
U.S. stocks have climbed 26% to record highs in 2019 despite trade uncertainty, Smart notes. The U.S. economy, driven by Federal Reserve rate cuts and a strong consumer benefiting from the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years, hasn’t suffered a major hit from trade unrest. The economy grew by about 2% in the third quarter. Corporate earnings growth, though less robust than in 2018, remained positive this year.
“Investors need to keep trade headlines in some perspective,” Smart says.
Still, investors face risks and opportunities related to trade.
Investment portfolios could face challenges from other trade spats, such as Trump’s threat to reimpose tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum from Brazil and Argentina and his proposal to slap duties on $2.4 billion of French products, including cheese and champagne, in retaliation for Paris levying a 3% tax on U.S. tech firm sales in France.
What’s a 401(k) investor to do? Should you put up a wall around your stock holdings to dodge any future, trade-driven sell-offs? Or climb out of your bunker and bet that the trade dispute won’t deteriorate or perhaps that it’ll even be resolved in a bullish way?
For now, since both countries are set to sign off on a “skinny deal,” removing one big risk facing the market, stock investors should look for ways to “play offense,” says Phil Orlando, chief equity strategist at Federated Investors.
Though the Phase 1 deal doesn’t remove all the uncertainty facing investors and corporate CEOs, it does signal progress. It should reduce recession fears and limit the hit to earnings of U.S. companies that would be hurt most by an escalation of the trade war. The thaw in relations between China and the United States should help keep the stock market’s upward trajectory on track and boost investors’ willingness to be more aggressive with their stock investments as the global growth outlook improves.
Deal is sealed! How to profit
The trend of the stock market and other risky assets, such as oil, getting a lift when there’s “good news” on the trade front should continue in the wake of a Phase 1 deal.
“If trade war risks go down, markets rally,” Mortimer says. The stocks that will rally the most, he predicts, are ones most “tethered to economic growth.”
They include shares of industrial companies, such as heavy-equipment makers, or oil and natural gas companies that fuel growth. Or “cyclical” stocks, such as automakers and aerospace companies, that move up and down in tandem with the economy. “They would do best,” Mortimer says.
Now that the Phase 1 deal is done, U.S. agriculture, such as soybean farmers, could see their asset values rise, Orlando says. Another offensive play: Invest in emerging markets, as these economies are more exposed to China. What’s good for China and the global economy is good for developing markets. “We moved emerging markets back into the buy column a few months ago,” Orlando says.
Now that President Trump has canceled the next round of tariffs targeting Chinese imports of consumer electronics, such as smartphones, laptop computers and other gadgets, shares of U.S. companies that sell these products will get a reprieve, Smart says. “If we didn’t get a deal, these companies would have been immediate victims,” he says.
Similarly, stocks with large sales exposure to China, such as semiconductor makers, should enjoy a relief rally, says James Lucier, managing director at Capital Alpha.
How long the relief rally lasts depends on how well the trade negotiations between China and the United States play out. The Phase 2 and Phase 3 parts of the Chinese/U.S. deal could drag out well into next year or even longer, Wall Street pros say. That leaves a lot of time for talks to sour and investor sentiment to turn downbeat again.
“If the trade war escalates, markets could react negatively,” Mortimer says.
Ways to insulate your portfolio
If trade talks break down, stock prices will probably fall. Here are a few ways to play defense:
“How do you protect yourself?” Orlando says. “Raise cash and de-risk the stock portion of your portfolio.”
Take profits on high-flying stock winners and move the money into less risky investments such as dividend-paying stocks: utilities, telecom companies and real estate investment trusts (REITS). Parking money in cash and U.S. government bonds also is a good defensive play.
“You could certainly hide out in Treasurys,” Orlando says.
Another way to avoid harm from renewed global trade headwinds is to tilt your holdings toward domestically focused U.S. stocks whose sales and supply chains won’t be hurt by tariffs, Lucier says. “You could keep a domestic focus,” he says.
Mortimer sums up the the trade-tiff-relapse portfolio: “If the global economy slows, you’d want a portfolio that screams safety,” he says. “You want bonds and fixed income.”
“The remarks by Sergeants Benevolent Association president Ed Mullins we find deeply inappropriate, as they intentionally or unintentionally direct blame onto Tess, a young woman, for her own murder,” the family of Majors, 18, said in a statement. “We would ask Mr. Mullins not to engage in such irresponsible public speculation, just as the NYPD asked our family not to comment as it conducts the investigation.”
Eyes and throat burning, she and other students began running toward the main library. Police officers chased them, she said, yelling insults — “sluts,” “Pakistanis,” “traitors” — and beating anyone they could with long sticks. She said she hid in a bathroom upstairs in the library, not daring to move.
MEXICO CITY —
Mexico’s trade negotiator for North America said Sunday that Mexico categorically opposes allowing foreign labor inspectors to operate in the country, saying that was not contemplated in the recent agreement with Washington and Ottawa on the USMCA pact to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Jesús Seade was flying to Washington to meet with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and U.S. lawmakers to express his country’s “surprise and concern” over language in implementation legislation introduced Friday in the U.S. Congress calling for the posting of up to five labor attaches to monitor Mexico’s labor reform.
Seade, an undersecretary in the Foreign Relations Department, said on Twitter that while the proposed attaches exact functions are not yet clear, “Mexico will NEVER accept them if it is in any way about disguised inspectors, for one simple reason: Mexican law prohibits it.”
Mexican negotiators have said they stood firm in opposition to the idea of letting in foreign inspectors out of sovereignty principles. Instead the agreement signed Dec. 10 in Mexico City called for three-person panels to field any disputes, with the panels including one person from Mexico, one from the United States and a person from a third country chosen by mutual consent.
Mexico’s Senate quickly passed the amended version of the deal last week.
After Seade raised objections Saturday to the language in the U.S. legislation and announced his sudden trip to Washington, critics suggested he and others in President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s government had overlooked something in the trade agreement and approved it too hastily.
Addressing ‘that criticism, Seade said there was no hidden “fine print” in the deal and the language on labor attaches in the U.S. legislation did not come from its text. He called it a “concession to the hard-liners in Congress … which should have been advised about and expresses mistrust.”
“It is a very good agreement for Mexico: Much was obtained in the trilateral,” he added. “That’s why the U.S. needs ‘extras’ to sell it internally that WERE NOT PART OF THE PACKAGE.”
Centrist Democrats, of course, think just the opposite. Mr. Biden, the former vice president, even after facing intense media scrutiny and racking up a number of self-inflicted errors, still fares slightly better in head-to-head polling against Mr. Trump than either of the two progressive front-runners.
Yet it was the combined strength of Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders, along with Mr. Biden’s fund-raising and debate difficulties, that frightened moderates enough to lure former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York and former Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts into the race. Now, though, it’s the left wing of the party that’s growing anxious about how to avoid its own debacle.
A handful of leaders from progressive labor unions have had initial conversations about if, when and how to collectively endorse a candidate and are planning to meet after the holidays, according to a Democrat familiar with the discussions.
Larry Cohen, the former president of the Communications Workers of America, is already thinking well ahead of that. Mr. Cohen supports Mr. Sanders but that prefers Ms. Warren stay in the race throughout the primary election to deny a moderate from accumulating a delegate majority. If Mr. Sanders doesn’t win outright, he said, the two progressives should demonstrate their combined strength, and amass over half the pledged delegates, so that the left has an upper hand going into next summer’s Democratic convention.
Mr. Cohen has been more aggressively making his case to other progressives about how both candidates should stockpile delegates, including over dinner last week with other Sanders supporters.
But in the near term, he and other left-wing organizers are mostly trying to keep the primary-within-a-primary between Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren from growing contentious.
On a conference call last month organized by Our Revolution, the Sanders-aligned progressive group, Ms. Jayapal and Mr. Cohen both urged activists to exert pressure on House Democrats to support “Medicare for all” while highlighting the common ground of the two presidential hopefuls.
Media caption‘We have no issues with the students’
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has appealed for calm as violent protests against a new law on illegal migrants entered a fifth day.
Large demonstrations are taking place in the capital Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Kolkata (formerly Calcutta).
Monday’s protests came a day after clashes between police and protesters in Delhi left at least 50 injured.
Protesters are angry at a law entitling citizenship to some non-Muslim migrants from three Muslim-majority countries.
But people are divided on why they have taken to the streets. Some critics say the law is anti-Muslim, while others – especially in border regions – fear large-scale migration.
The protests – which have left six people dead – began in the north-eastern state of Assam on Thursday, before spreading to other parts of northern and eastern India.
But as students resumed their protests on Monday, Mr Modi attempted to calm tensions in a series of tweets.
“No Indian has anything to worry regarding this act. This act is only for those who have faced years of persecution outside and have no other place to go except India,” the prime minister wrote.
“This is the time to maintain peace, unity and brotherhood.”
Authorities have tried to curb the protests by shutting down internet services, so it is unclear how many people in affected areas have seen his tweets.
Image copyright Getty Images
Image caption
Police say they did what was necessary to stop the protests in Delhi
Several lawyers have asked the Supreme Court to intervene, pointing out that officers had allegedly assaulted students in bathrooms, but the chief justice said that the court would not take any action until the protests ceased.
Delhi police spokesman MS Randhawa denied the allegations, saying his officers “exercised maximum restraint”.
The UK, US and Canada have issued travel warnings for people visiting India’s north-east, telling their citizens to “exercise caution” if travelling to the region.
What is happening in Delhi?
Protests resumed at the city’s prestigious Jamia Millia Islamia university on Monday morning, despite violent clashes on Sunday which resulted in 35 students being detained.
A march on Sunday ended with at least three buses and several motorbikes being torched, roads blocked and stones being thrown at officers, who responded with tear gas.
The university said police later entered the campus without permission and video footage showed police assaulting students and staff. Videos shot by students show police beating up students inside campus areas like bathrooms and the library.
Police have said that they did what was “necessary” to stop the protests.
Image copyright Getty Images
Image caption
Student protesters near Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi
The university’s vice chancellor, Najma Akhtar, condemned the police action on Monday, telling reporters they would be filing a court case against the police and demanding a high-level inquiry.
She also denied rumours of student deaths.
Hundreds of people also protested in other parts of the city, including in Jawaharlal Nehru University and outside the city’s police headquarters.
How have Indian authorities reacted?
India’s Chief Justice Sharad Bobde said that the Supreme Court will intervene only if “the atmosphere settles down”, adding that student protesters could not “take the law into their own hands”.
“The court can’t do anything right now. Let the riots stop,” he said.
Meanwhile, Delhi police spokesman MS Randhawa appealed for calm and asked students to not get provoked, even as he denied allegations of excessive force.
“Police exercised utmost restraint. There was no firing and we have used minimum force,” he said at a press conference on Monday.
Image copyright AFP
Image caption
Buses were torched in Delhi on Sunday
The police have been heavily criticised, with many on social media alleging that officers attacked students with sticks and tear gas when they were peacefully protesting.
But Mr Randhawa said students and locals threw stones at the police first, adding that 30 policemen were injured.
“We will identify outside protesters and take action against them,” he said.
What has the reaction been in other Indian cities?
Live footage from the northern city of Lucknow on Monday showed students at Nadwa university throwing stones at security forces, who retaliated by throwing the stones back at them.
The students have been locked inside the campus.
Image caption
A map of the unrest in the capital Delhi on Sunday
Local television footage also showed officers hitting students with large sticks.
In Kolkata, tens of thousands of people have joined a demonstration led by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her ruling Trinamool Congress party.
The situation remains tense and more protests are expected. Students at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology in the southern city of Chennai (formerly Madras) have already announced a protest this afternoon.
Why is the law so divisive?
The law allows non-Muslims from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, who entered India illegally, to become citizens.
The Hindu-nationalist BJP government argues that the law aims to accommodate those who have fled religious persecution.
Critics say the law is part of the government’s agenda to marginalise Muslims, and that it violates secular principles enshrined in the constitution.
Earlier this week, the United Nations Human Rights office voiced concern that the new law was fundamentally discriminatory in nature.
The government denies any religious bias and says Muslims are not covered by the new law because they are not religious minorities, and therefore do not need India’s protection.
Meanwhile, people in Assam fear that they will be “overrun” by illegal non-Muslim migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh.
They argue that outsiders will take over their land and jobs – eventually dominating their culture and identity.
Larry Hu, head of Greater China economics at Macquarie, said in a note Saturday that the trade tensions have a greater impact on sentiment than economic growth, which is more reliant on other factors.
“Therefore, a phase-1 trade deal could prevent things from getting worse by cancelling the new tariff, but could not make things much better,” Hu said.
It’s still unclear how and when the U.S. will roll back other tariffs, a condition for a phase-one deal that the Chinese side has firmly maintained. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said in a statement that the United States will keep 25% tariffs on about $250 billion of Chinese imports, along with 7.5% duties on roughly $120 billion of Chinese imports.
Both sides also still need to sign the text of an agreement, which Chinese officials said requires legal review and translation. Lighthizer said both countries hope to sign the deal in Washington in early January, and there would be no new tariffs as long as China negotiates in good faith.
Scott Kennedy, senior advisor and trustee chair in Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, pointed out Friday in an online article that this marks the “fifth instance during the U.S.-China trade dispute that a deal has been prematurely declared.”
“With only limited concessions, China has been able to preserve its mercantilist economic system and continue its discriminatory industrial policies at the expense of China’s trading partners and the global economy,” he said. “Trump could reverse course and renew tariffs, but Beijing has bought itself a likely respite from the daily uncertainty for at least a few months and perhaps for the remainder of Trump’s current term.”
On a balmy Saturday afternoon in November, dozens of people gathered in front of the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles to show their support for the protesters in Hong Kong.
Carrying signs with slogans like “Stay Strong” and “Don’t Go Back,” they marched from Shatto Place up to Wilshire Boulevard and back to the consulate. Some wore masks, like their counterparts in Hong Kong, shouting “no brutality, no tear gas!”
Do you hear the people sing? Singing a song of angry men? It is the music of a people Who will not be slaves again
But the majority of those who rallied in front of the consulate that day were not Chinese Americans. They were Southern Californians of Vietnamese descent.
Among the Vietnamese diaspora, support for the protesters in Hong Kong has been ongoing and pronounced. Vietnamese around the world have followed the protests via Facebook, with some vacationing in Hong Kong videotaping demonstrators and sharing the footage, often live, on the social media platform to promote the pro-democracy movement. This support is rooted, in part, in the fact that many people who fled South Vietnam during the communist takeover later settled in Hong Kong, which was then still under British rule.
Alex Trinh, a hairstylist who drove from his home in Garden Grove to take part in the demonstration at the Chinese Consulate, stressed that the rally spoke to broader concerns regarding the future of democracy in Asia.
At the rally in Los Angeles, demonstrators said they were compelled to participate after seeing images of Hong Kong officials mistreatingstudents who had barricaded themselves on university campuses throughout the city. They also recalled avideo widely interpreted as showing riot police officers kicking a man wearing a yellow shirt.
“But we’re not just here for Hong Kong,” said Trinh, who made a black banner that read “Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong” and distributed matching shirts at the rally.
“If Hong Kong falls,” he said, “there could be a domino effect in the region.”
When discussing the potential expansion of Beijing’s reach, Trinh and other marcherspointed to Taiwan, whose status they perceive as precarious. The island has been self-ruled since the 1940s, when Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek retreated there along with millions of his supporters after losing the war against Communist forces. The Chinese government, however, maintains that Taiwan and China are a single country, and Chinese President Xi Jinping has not ruled out force in his quest for unification. The protests in Hong Kong, which also concern questions of autonomy, have sparked concerns about the future of Taiwan, where presidential elections will take place in January.
The Vietnamese diaspora’s fear of China’s “encroaching reach across East Asia” is “valid and justified,” said Lev Nachman, a doctoral candidate at UC Irvine researching the relationship between social movements and political parties, with an emphasis on Taiwan and Hong Kong.
However, he added, Taiwan is “well prepared to fight back against a potential domino effect. Unlike Vietnam, Taiwan is a democracy, and unlike Hong Kong, Taiwan is de facto independent from the [People’s Republic of China].”
Plus, Nachman said, even though China “constantly tries to exploit Taiwan’s democracy against itself through disinformation campaigns or by funding pro-China politicians, the Taiwanese people have shown over time that they do not want to be incorporated,” instead preferring “some version of the status quo” or a “push for more sovereignty.”
Pointing to the 1997 “one country, two systems” framework, which enables Hong Kong to retain its own economic and administrative systems and affords residents more rights than their counterparts in mainland China, Nachman added that “Taiwan will not simply fall next.”
“Every politician in Taiwan — even the pro-China politicians — have gone on the record to say they reject ‘one country, two systems’ and do not want Taiwan to fall into such a regime,” he said.
The protests in Hong Kong, in fact, were spurred by an extradition bill, issued in response to a Taiwan murder case involving two Hong Kong residents. Had it been implemented, the measure would have allowed criminal suspects to be sent for trial in Communist Party-controlled courts in mainland China.
As for the outpouring of support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement among the Vietnamese community in Southern California, UC Irvine history professor Jeffrey Wasserstrom said that “there are long connections between the two regions,” including the settlement of refugees.
Daniel Tsang, distinguished librarian emeritus at UC Irvine, who studied in Hanoi and Hong Kong, also underscored a long history of cross-migration. Some residents of Orange County’s Little Saigon, he said, are actually descendants of “ethnic Chinese” who fled to Vietnam before settling in the United States. In fact, Tsang added, many of the refugees who fled after the fall of Saigon and settled at Camp Pendleton in 1975 were ethnic Chinese.
In addition to the rally in Los Angeles, there have been other examples of support for the Hong Kong protesters in the Vietnamese community. Earlier this year, Vietnamese American musician and television producer Truc Ho released the song “Sea of Black” in reference to protests opposing the extradition bill.
In an accompanying music video, residents of France, Australia, England and the United States show their support in English and Vietnamese.
One of them waves the old flag of South Vietnam, as did the marchers at the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles.
“For many overseas Vietnamese,” said Hoi Trinh, an Australian human rights attorney of Vietnamese descent, the yellow banner with three red stripes “is a symbol of democracy and freedom.”
Trinh, who has been given the key to the city of Garden Grove for his work, lamented not being able to join the rally at the Chinese Consulate.
At the time, he was in Washington, lobbying on behalf of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. The legislation, which was signed into law by President Trump in November, requires an annual review to determine whether Hong Kong is sufficiently autonomous to retain its special trade status with the United States. It was signed alongside another bill that prohibits the export of riot control weapons like tear gas and rubber bullets to the region. China, which has been at loggerheads with the United States over trade, reacted by having its ambassador protest the legislation, signaling that the move could undermine U.S.-China relations, a concern Trump expressed when hesitating to support the measures.
Like most of the marchers at the consulate, Trinh, the attorney, has no direct ties to Hong Kong. He visited the city for the first time when he was in law school in the early 1990s to help Vietnamese refugees resettle in the area.
This, he said, is why he identifies with the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. He founded the anti-establishment Vietnamese Overseas Initiative for Conscience Empowerment (VOICE), a nongovernmental organization that helps stateless Vietnamese refugees gain asylum and provides internship programs to train social activists in Vietnam.
“It’s not just in the States,” Trinh added. “It’s worldwide.”
Times staff writers Anh Do and Jennifer Lu contributed to this report.
ST. LOUIS, Mo. — This morning I continue to track this ever-evolving winter weather that brings us a Winter Storm Warning through tonight, expiring at 12 AM Tuesday. We have updates to the forecast.
On Sunday the St. Louis area received anywhere from 2″-3″ of snowfall, with slightly higher amounts just to the northwest. At last check Lambert received 2.4″.
This morning I continue to get in reports of light freezing drizzle that is creating for a light glaze. This will continue for the next few hours, before more substantial precip arrives later this morning and afternoon. The second batch of freezing rain/snow will start to arrive closer to 6-7 AM for areas southwest. It starts mainly as freezing rain as it moves in from the south.
The precipitation lifts to the northwest bringing in light/moderate snowfall to the St. Louis area after 10:00 am. This continues to expand north through the afternoon, but some areas north of I-70 may stay dry through a good chunk of the day. Ongoing snow is possible through the day in the area, as the intensity will change on and off. Like we saw yesterday for about an hour, we could receive a band of heavy snow, where rates are up to 1″ an hour. Areas south of Jeff CO see the better chance of freezing rain this afternoon.
Additional snow totals could range 3″-5″, localized areas higher, in the metro, with cutoffs in snow accumulation as you head north and south of St. Louis County. Of course, we will have to wait and see again where the heaviest bands set up. South see the better chance for additional ice accumulation.
Tuesday the system pulls east drying us out and keeping us cold.
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